MEETING PLACE LETTERS

Introduction

The Danish University Consortium on Sustainable Land Use and Natural Resource Management comprises three Danish universities and facilitates education and research on a wide range of topics pertaining to sustainable land use and natural resource management. SLUSE has developed a programme for the integration and improvement of education, field training and research both in Denmark but most importantly also in the countries targeted for Danish environment and development assistance (the DEA countries).

The program is sponsored by the Danish Co-operation for Environment and Development (DANCED), and was taken over by Danida (Danish National Development Assistance) in late 2001.

DUCED SLUSE was initiated as a pilot phase in March 1998 which lasted until October 2000. SLUSE is currently in the consolidation phase of the project, and is planned to continue as a self sustaining education alternative for B.Sc.'s in Denmark, Malaysia, Thailand and the southern African countries, also after the end of the funding period in late 2003.

DUCED-SLUSE is going to continue the actvities also after the consolidation phase of SLUSE ends.

Background for the SLUSE collaboration

In response to the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, the Danish Parliament decided to increase environment and disaster relief assistance to 0.5% of the Danish GDI by the year 2002. Of this amount one quarter is to be used in developing countries to promote efforts to combat global environmental problems. Accordingly, the demand has surged for Danish expertise on environmental assistance and sustainable development, especially problem oriented experiences with sustainable land use and natural resource management. In the early 1990s there was a significant shortage of Danish university candidates (Masters) able to deal both with the scientific and technical aspects of natural resource problems, and the social, economic and cultural dynamics revolving around these problems. Therefore DCUED-SLUSE was established in co-operation with three Danish universities in 1996, to develop and strengthen expertise within interdisciplinary environmental research and assistance in the particular regions chosen for Danish environment and development assistance, namely Southeast Asia and southern Africa. The three consortium universities are University of Copenhagen, the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University and Roskilde University.

The Objectives of SLUSE

The worldwide scientific communities dealing with the oceans and the atmosphere have been able to integrate and synthesize their findings and thus formulate a compelling message that has found its way to the global agenda. However, this level of clarity has not been attained across the scientific communities dealing with the land. Therefore the overriding objective of the consortium is: 'to develop interdisciplinarity with the view to formulate a univocal perception of the problems and solutions with regard to land use and land stewardship'.

Three main elements have been identified to fulfil the objective:

* improvement of the relevant curricula and strengthening cooperation between the participating universities in Denmark,

* creating a basis for the establishment of partnership between selected universities in the cooperating countries and Denmark, with special emphasis on enhancing capacities on curriculum development and stronger interdisciplinary integration. Establishment of Ph.D. courses in collaboration with universities in cooperating countries and initiation of a number of Ph.D. scholarships, and finally

* development of a coherent Danish inter-disciplinary base for improvement of the ongoing research activities pertaining to environmental educational curricula at the participating universities by appropriate twinning arrangements, collaborative research projects etc.

Where is SLUSE today?

Today, the outlined objectives have been reached or are on-going:

* Firstly the foundation for teaching interdiscliplinary environmental courses has been set up in the three partner universities in Denmark.
* An extensive course catalogue has been set up
* Over 250 students have taken or currently attend SLUSE courses at the three universities.
* The fifth batch of SLUSE students have just started their SLUSE studies in September 2002.
* Collaboration universities in the DEA countries have been found
* Six SLUSE PhD students are currently working within SLUSE.
* SLUSE research programme have been set up
* For more details - see the homepage http://www.sluse.dk

Contact

Christopher Saarnak
The Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University
Thorvaldsensvej, 40, 3rd floor, room R-323
1871 Frederiksberg C. - Denmark
Tel: (+45) 35 28 34 91  Fax: (+45) 35 28 30 98
E-mail: [email protected]
Homepage: http://www.sluse.dk